New song in the style of Sam Cooke needs mix feedback.

[patlang12]

This is my first post in the mixing clinic in a long time. I'm looking for feedback on this mix. I don't feel like it's quite where it needs to be yet, but I could use some critiques to help get it there. Tear it apart!

Here is the link: Please Oh Please 7:2:12 by patlang12 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

 

[fat_fleet]

Cool tune. The bass seems like it's way up there, you could probably pull it back a couple dBs and eq for a little more definition, and the whole mix sounds like it could be a little brighter, but that's not the first time I've said that this past week listening on these earbuds and laptop...could be my environment. Great song though- I love retro sounding stuff like this.

 

[Greg_L]

Very, very nice. Love it. Sounds very similar to "Another Saturday Night" though. Almost note for note.

The whole mix does sound a little dark. It lacks some sparkle and shine. I like the bass level. Fits the song perfectly. Overall it's a great song and arrangement. Just shine it up some.

 

[patlang12]

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking the bass might be a little boomy. I might try to tame the boom and get a tab bit more growl out of it. Do you think there are specific instruments that should be shined up or just the entire mix? I was keeping it a little bit darker to try to get a little more vintage sound, but maybe I need to give it more life in the high end. The only things I've really darkened were the drums (I used the Glyn Johns technique and the cymbals were coming through really loud and bright) and the reverb on the vocals (it's digital reverb and I was trying to get rid of the high end artifacts in the reverb tails that made it sound fake). When I get a chance I'm planning on putting the vox through an actual reverb chamber that I can get access to. Also the horn section is three trombones and an alto sax. That is probably a bit darker than your average horn section.

 

[Lt. Bob]

entire mix needs some 'aparkle' ..... other than that I like it a LOT!

Very nice and you're really captured that vibe very well.

 

[Elton123]

Yeah, nothing more to add, but I really dig it!!

 

[patlang12]

After listening some more I'm hearing what everyone is saying about the lack of high end. I'm going to start with the horns and vocals and try to stay away from the drums at first because the high end really makes the hi hat jump out a lot. I'll post a new mix after I make the changes to get some more feedback. Thanks for the help!

 

[patlang12]

http://soundcloud.com/patlang12/please-oh-please-7-3-12

Ok here is a new mix. I took out a little bit of the boom from the bass. I added high end to the horns and scooped out some of those frequencies from the backup vocals. I think it's sounding better. To my ears the horns have more punch and now that they have more of their own space they fight with the vocals less during the chorus. To those who said it needed more sparkle, how does it sound now? I also panned the horns a bit harder to try to get them to balance better during the solo section (five solos at once is hard to balance! ). Right now that panning is throughout the whole song but I'm considering saving the extreme panning only for the solos so that the horns sound like more of a section the rest of the song. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated as well!

 

[Armistice]

I can't hear a hell of a lot of difference and that could be for two reasons... 1. I'm listening on small headphones at work and/or 2. You've got it up on Soundcloud, which isn't exactly hi fi.

For mix feedback where you want critical listening I'd tend to use Dropbox or similar and stick up a 320kB file - you might be able to hear your changes, but are you listening to the uncompressed audio from your DAW or the Soundcloud version that I'm listening to?

Of course, the third option is that I'm going deaf, which is entirely possible.

All that said, I didn't think there was much wrong with the first version... cool vibe you've got going. Good stuffl

 

[patlang12]

Armistice, you're right. This was my first time using soundcloud. I hoped that the quality would be better since it let me upload aif files. Here is a link to download the new mix in 320kb:

 

[Lt. Bob]

still lacks sparkle ..... it wasn't the horns that struck me that way first time .... it was the overall mix .... this is a better mix but the 'air' around the band, the overall sound of the mix is dull. I'd look at the verb you're using for one.

ummm, using seperate solos together turns it into dixieland ..... if that's what you like then fine (I'm from Louisiana/New Orleans so I'm fine with dixieland) but it doesn't seem to fit the style of Sam Cooke.

Don't think I'm not liking it BTW. I just point out areas I'd want changed.

But it's a great song and a great performance .... great vocals .... really nice.

Thing about a dense mix like this ..... you could mix it 100 substantially different ways and have ALL of them sound good ..... just different.
I like what you've done here.